Page 44 of Untouched Queen by Royal Command

CHAPTER NINE

AUGUSTUSSTRODEINTO his office in a mood that ran blacker than usual. He’d woken alone in Sera’s quarters, with a breakfast tray beside him and a blanket draped over his nakedness. They’d finally made it to her bed during the night. Sleep had overtaken him at some point after that. There’d been a note on the pillow next to his head. Exercising, was all the note said. A morning ritual for his courtesan of the High Reaches. No matter what.

He’d left a similar note on the pillow requesting her company mid-morning. He had a lunch date he couldn’t get out of. With Katerina DeLitt.

He stalked to the coffee corner in the outer office and poured a cup for himself in silence. Lukewarm coffee was his friend.

His secretary cleared his throat and Augustus spared him a glance and there was something off in the older man’s gaze—but how could he know?

Granted, the man knew practically everything, but still…

Did he have I lost my mind and my heart last night written on his forehead?

‘Morning,’ he muttered.

‘You’re late,’ the older man said.

Augustus nodded. Instead of taking a quick morning shower, he’d lingered in that damned bathing pool of Sera’s, working the kinks out of his body and hoping she’d turn up. She hadn’t.

The older man handed him a file and Augustus took it. ‘What’s this?’

‘The investigative report on Lady Sera’s mother arrived last night, hand-delivered.’

‘Sounds ominous.’

‘My investigator judged the information to be of extreme sensitivity so he went old school, helped by the fact that he’s seventy years old and is old school. The report is hand-written; no digital copies exist and he cleaned up as he went.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning no one’s ever going to find that information again unless they read the file you’re holding. You’ve paid handsomely for the information and that service, by the way. Enough to send an old military-hero-turned-investigator into welcome retirement.’

‘I live to serve.’ Augustus took the folder from the other man with a frown. He dealt with classified information on a daily basis. He’d never read a hand-written report before. ‘Is the information really that sensitive?’

‘I doubt it’ll start a war. I suspect it’d come as a shock to some of the people involved. Perhaps not all.’

‘Be cryptic, then. What do I have on at eleven? Can we clear some space for a meeting with Sera?’

‘Another costume tour of the brothels? Circus arts for children? Tortoise races?’

Augustus allowed himself a smile. ‘Not yet. And I’m going to need more coffee. Double shot. Hot.’

He went to his office and shut the door behind him, slapped the file down on his desk. His desk was big, black and imposing and his chair was fit for a king and significantly more comfortable. The room was cold, his sister was always complaining of it, but he found it stopped people from lingering overlong and the less they lingered, the more work he got done.

The first half hour of his day was always dedicated to reading. Daily reports sat waiting for him in a tidy pile, arranged in order of importance. He could have read them on his computer just as easily, but there was something about the ritual of paper copies and the pile getting smaller as he worked his way through them that appealed to him. There was an end to that pile of papers, whereas digital news was never-ending. Even if he was deluding himself, he liked to think that his workload had an end-point.

Sera’s mother had loved a man, an abusive man, and had a child by him. Sera had already told him this. But she’d never mentioned names, and if he was contemplating marriage to her—which, God help him, he was—he wanted no surprises.

* * *

Sera didn’t know what to expect when she walked into Augustus’s office at exactly eleven a.m. She’d left him sleeping soundly in her quarters because she hadn’t known how to deal with him after a night like the one they’d just shared. She still didn’t know how to deal with him. But she crossed the cold room and took a seat in the chair placed strategically on the opposite side of his gleaming black desk and tried not to fidget beneath his impenetrable black-eyed gaze.

Gone was his openness of last night and the defencelessness he’d exposed in his sleep. The tousled hair and the boneless weight of his body in her bed. The long, dark lashes fanning delicately over the skin beneath his eyes. He’d been beautiful in his sleep. Softer and more boyish and she’d looked her fill in case she never got to see it again. Some of the things they’d done last night… Skin to skin with heaven in between.

She’d asked for it. She had asked for it. And she had received. ‘Morning.’

He quirked a brow and returned her greeting and asked if she wanted some coffee.

She didn’t. ‘You wanted to see me?’

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